Thanks to devices like the Surface Laptop Go and the new Surface Pro 7+, touchscreens are becoming increasingly common in Windows devices. However, the jury is still out on whether it helps or hurts productivity in laptops with regular form-factors. So if you are looking for a way to disable or turn off the touchscreen functionality in your Windows 10 laptop, look no further. In this article, we will show you how to permanently disable (turn off) or enable the touchscreen on Windows 10 using the Device Manager (devmgmt), the PowerShell, the Command Prompt (cmd) and the Windows Registry (regedit).

This article will show you how to temporarily or permanently disable the touchscreen functionality on your Windows 10 laptop, convertible or ultrabook. In case you have a change of heart and want to give the feature another go, you can re-enable it by retracing your steps and going through the same settings and configuration options. So without any further delay, let’s check out three distinct ways to disable or turn off the touchscreen functionality on your Windows 10 computer.

  • Method 1: Using Device Manager
  • Method 2: Using PowerShell
  • Method 3: Using Windows Registry

Method 1: Using Device Manager

Using the Device Manager is the easiest way to enable or disable the touch functionality of your Windows 10 device. You can do it in a few simple clicks without having to use the command line or muck around in the Windows Registry.

  • In the Device Manager Window, double-click on ‘Human Interface Devices’ to expand it.

Introduced with Windows 8, PowerShell is a command-line shell that lets you to perform a whole host of tweaks and changes in Windows 10, including the ability to enable and disable the touchscreen. You can access it from the same menu as described in method 1.

  • Right-click on the Start button (or press Windows key + X simultaneously) and select ‘Windows PowerShell (Admin)’ on the popup menu.

Finally, you can also use the good old Windows Registry to enable or disable the touchscreen in Windows 10. As of now, this is the only permanent method to disable the touchscreen on your Windows 10 PC. That’s because Microsoft is known to re-enable the feature with every major update if it’s been turned off using the other methods.

  • Open the Windows Registry Editor. For that, search “regedit” in the Windows Search Bar and click on the first result.

  • The new key (in case of CURRENT_USER) should have the hexadecimal value “0” by default [Data=0x00000000 (0)]. In case of LOCAL_MACHINE, double-click on the existing key to change the value to 0. In both cases, restart the computer for the change to take effect.

Touchscreen laptops have been common at the premium end of the laptop market for a while, and now more such devices are now hitting the mid-range segment. However, even though Microsoft seems rather gung ho about it, not everybody finds the feature useful. Indeed, some folks actually believe that it creates unnecessary hassles in regular laptops and ultrabooks. So if you belong to that group, we hope you found this guide helpful.